The genome of plants, for example soybean or maize plants, was successfully transformed with transgenes in the 1990's. Over the last twenty years, numerous methodologies have been developed for transforming the genome of plants, wherein a transgene is stably integrated into the genome of plants. The evolution of plant transformation methodologies has resulted in the capability to successfully introduce a transgene comprising an agronomic trait within the genome of plants. The introduction of insect resistance and herbicide tolerant traits within plants provided producers with a new and convenient technological innovation for controlling insects and a wide spectrum of weeds, which was unparalleled in cultivation farming methods.
Current transformation methodologies rely upon the random insertion of transgenes within the genome of plants. Because transgenic events may randomly integrate within gene transcriptional sequences, such events may interrupt the expression of endogenous traits and alter the growth and development of the plant. In addition, the transgenic events may indiscriminately integrate into locations of the genome that are susceptible to gene silencing, culminating in the reduced or complete inhibition of transgene expression either in the first or subsequent generations of transgenic plants. Finally, the random integration of transgenes within the plant genome requires considerable effort and cost in identifying the location of the transgenic event and selecting transgenic events that perform as designed without agronomic impact to the plant.
Therefore, there is the need for inventions that are useful to evaluate the effectiveness of the integration sites of transgene for gene expression, and/or to predict the risk for transgene silencing.